Authors: Wilbur Smith
‘I am afraid so, sir.’
Wilson took his hat from his head and against his thigh he beat the raindrops from its brim. Then he settled it again carefully on his head at a jaunty angle.
‘Then it seems there is only one direction that we can take, one direction in which the Matabele will not expect us to move.’ He turned back to Borrow. ‘Our orders were to
seize the king, and now our very lives depend on it. We must have Lobengula as a hostage. We have to go forward – and that right smartly.’ He raised his voice. ‘Troop, mount! Walk
march, trot!’
They rode closed up, tense and silent. Clinton’s old grey had benefited from the night’s rest, and kept his place in the third file.
A young trooper rode at Clinton’s right hand.
‘What is your name, son?’ he asked quietly.
‘Dillon, sir – I mean, Reverend.’ He was smooth-cheeked, and fresh-faced.
‘How old are you, Dillon?’
‘Eighteen, Reverend.’
They are all so young, Clinton thought. Even Major Allan Wilson himself is barely thirty years of age. If only, he thought, if only—
‘Padre!’
Clinton looked up sharply, his attention had been wandering. They had long ago emerged from the thick bush, and were now coming up to the same spot from which they had retreated the previous
evening.
The wagons were still standing abandoned beside the rude track; the tents made pale geometrical oblongs of solid canvas against the dark wet scrub.
Once again, Wilson halted the patrol, and Clinton walked the grey forward.
‘Tell them we do not wish to fight,’ Wilson ordered.
‘There is nobody here.’
‘Try anyway,’ Wilson urged. ‘If the wagons are deserted, then we will ride on until we catch up with the king.’
Clinton rode forward, shouting as he went:
‘Lobengula, do not be afraid. It is me. Hlopi.’
There was no reply, only the flutter of the wind in the torn wagon canvas.
‘Warriors of Matabele – children of Mashobane, we do not wish to fight—’ Clinton called again; and this time he was answered by a bellowing bull voice, haughty and angry
and proud. It came out of the gloom and rain, seeming to emanate from the very air, for there was no man to be seen.
‘Hau, white men! You do not wish to fight – but we do, for our eyes are red and our steel is thirsty.’
The last word was blown away on a great gust of sound, and the shrub about them misted over with blue gunsmoke and the air about their heads was torn by a gale of shot.
It was twenty-five years and more since Clinton had stood to receive volleyed gunfire; yet he could still clearly differentiate between the crack of high-powered rifles and the whistle of ball
thrown from ancient muzzle loaders, and in the storm the ‘whirr-whirr’ of beaten pot-legs tumbling as they flew; so that, glancing up, Clinton expected to actually see one come over
like a rising pheasant.
‘Back! Fall back!’ Wilson was shouting, and the horses were all rearing and plunging. The fire was, most of it, flying overhead. As always, the Matabele had raised their sights to
the maximum; but there must have been a hundred or more of them hidden in the shrub and random bullets were scoring.
One of the troopers was hit in both eyes, the bridge of his nose shot away. He was reeling in the saddle, clutching his face with blood spurting out between his fingers. His number two spurred
in to catch him before he fell, and with an arm around his shoulder led him at a gallop back along the trail.
Young Dillon’s horse was hit in the neck, and he was thrown in the mud, but he came up with his rifle in his hands, and Clinton yelled at him as he galloped back.
‘Cut off your saddle-bags. You’ll need every round in them, lad.’
Clinton came in for the pick-up, but Wilson rode him off like a polo player.
‘Your moke’s half done, Padre. He’ll not carry two. Get on with you!’
They tried to make a stand in the thicket where they had spent the night, but the hidden Matabele riflemen crept in so close that four of the horses went down, kicking and struggling, exposing
the men who had been standing behind them, firing over their backs, and three of the men were hit. One of them, a young Afrikander from the Cape, had a pot-leg slug shatter the bone above his right
elbow. The arm was hanging on a tattered ribbon of flesh, and Clinton used the sleeves of his shirt to make a sling for it.
‘Well, Padre, we are for it now – and that’s no mistake.’ The trooper grinned at him, white face speckled with his own blood, like a thrush’s egg.
‘We can’t stand here,’ Wilson called. ‘Two wounded to a horse and a man to lead them. They’ll go in the centre with those who have lost their own horses. The rest
of us will ride in a box around them.’
Clinton helped the young Afrikander up onto the grey’s back, and one of the lads from Borrow’s volunteers up behind him. The sharp slivers of his shin bone were sticking out of the
meat of his leg.
They started back slowly, at the pace of the walkers, and from the thickets beside the track the muskets banged and smoked; but the Matabele were all of them well hidden. Clearly, they were
taking no chances, even with this tiny band of thirty-odd men.
Clinton walked beside the grey, holding the good leg of the wounded man to prevent him slipping from the saddle. He carried the two rifles belonging to the wounded men slung over his
shoulder.
‘Padre!’ Clinton looked up to find Wilson above him. ‘We have three horses that are fresh enough to try a run for the river. I have ordered Burnham and Ingram to try and get
back to the main camp and warn St John of our predicament. There is one horse for you. They will take you with them.’
‘Thank you, Major,’ Clinton answered without a moment’s hesitation. ‘I am a sailor and a priest, not a horseman; besides, I rather think I have work to do here. Let
somebody else go.’
Wilson nodded. ‘I expected you to say that.’ He pushed his horse to a trot and went up to the head of the dismal little column. Minutes later, Clinton heard the quick beat of flying
hooves and he looked up to see three horsemen wheel out of the straggling line and plunge into the brush that surrounded them.
There was a chorus of angry yells and the low humming ‘Jee!’ as the Matabele tried to head them off, but Clinton saw their hats bobbing away above the low bush, and he called after
them.
‘God speed you, boys!’
Then, as he trudged on in the mud that was balling to the soles of his riding boots – he began silently to pray.
On the outside of the column, another horse fell, throwing its rider over its head, and then lunged up again to stand on three legs, shivering miserably in the rain, its off-fore hanging limply
as a sock on a laundry line. The trooper limped back, drawing his revolver from its webbing holster, and shot the animal between the eyes.
‘That’s a wasted bullet,’ Wilson called clearly. ‘Don’t waste any more.’
They went on slowly, and after a while Clinton became aware that they were no longer following the wagon tracks. Wilson seemed to be leading them gradually more towards the east, but it was hard
to tell, for the sun was still hidden by low, grey cloud.
Then abruptly the column stopped again, and now for the first time the insistent banging of muskets from hidden skirmishers in the mopani scrub was silenced.
Wilson had led them into a lovely parklike forest, with short, green grass below the stately mopani trees. Some of these trees stood sixty feet high and their trunks were fluted and twisted as
though moulded from potter’s clay.
They could see deep into the forest, between the widely spaced trunks. There, directly ahead of the patrol, stretched across their front, waited the army of Lobengula. How many thousands, it was
impossible to tell, for their rearguard was hidden in the forest; and even as the little band of white men stared at their host, the
Jikela
began, the ‘surrounding’ which had
been the Zulu way ever since great Chaka’s time.
The ‘horns’ were being spread, the youngest and swiftest warriors running out on the flanks, their naked skins burning like black fire through the forest. A net around a shoal of
sardines, they were thrown out until the tips of the horns met to the rear of the band of white men – and again all movement ceased.
Facing the patrol was the ‘chest of the bull’, the hard and seasoned veterans; when the ‘horns’ tightened, it was the ‘chest’ that would close and crush, but
now they waited, massed rank upon rank, silent and watchful. Their shields were of dappled black and white, their plumes were of the ostrich, jet black and frothing white, and their kilts of
spotted civet tails. In their silence and stillness, it was not necessary for Wilson to raise his voice above conversational tones.
‘Well, gentlemen. We will not be going any farther – not for a while anyway. Kindly dismount and form the circle.’
Quietly the horses were led into a ring, so that they stood with their noses touching the rump of the one ahead. Behind each horse, his rider crouched with the stock of his rifle resting on the
saddle, aiming across at the surrounding wall of silent, waiting black and white dappled shields.
‘Padre!’ Wilson called softly, and Clinton left the wounded whom he was tending in the centre and crossed quickly to his side.
‘I want you here to translate, if they want to parley.’
‘There will be no more talking,’ Clinton assured him, and as he said it the massed ranks of the ‘chest’ parted and a tall induna came through. Even at a distance of two
hundred paces, he was an imposing figure in his plumes and tassels of valour.
‘Gandang,’ said Clinton quietly. ‘The king’s half-brother.’
For long seconds Gandang stared across at the circle of rain-streaked horses and the grim, white faces that peered over them, and then he lifted his broad assegai above his head. It was almost a
gladiatorial salute, and he held it for a dozen beats of Clinton’s heart. Then his voice carried clearly to where they waited.
‘Let it begin!’ he called, and his spear arm dropped.
Instantly, the horns came racing in, tightening like a strangler’s grip on the throat.
‘Steady!’ Wilson called. ‘Hold your fire! No bullets to waste, lads! Hold your fire, wait to make sure.’
The blades came out of the thongs that held them to the grip of the shields with a rasping growl, and the war chant rose, deep and resonant:
‘Jee! Jee!’ And now the silver blades drummed on the dappled rawhide, so that the horses stamped and threw their heads.
‘Wait lads.’ The front rank was fifty yards away, sweeping in out of the gentle silky grey rain mist.
‘Pick your man! Pick your man!’ Twenty yards, chanting and drumming to the rhythm of their pounding bare feet.
‘Fire!’ Gunfire rippled around the tight little circle, not a single blast but with the spacing that told that every shot had been aimed, and the front rank of attackers melted into
the soggy earth.
The breech blocks clashed, and the gunfire was continuous, like strings of Chinese crackers, and an echo came back, the slapping sound of lead bullets striking naked black flesh.
At two places the warriors burst into the ring, and for desperate seconds there were knots of milling men, and the banging of revolvers held point blank to chest and belly. Then the black wave
lost its impetus, hesitated and finally drew back, the surviving warriors slipping back into the forest, leaving their dead scattered in the wet grass.
‘We did it, we sent them off!’ someone yelled, and then they were all cheering.
‘A little early to celebrate,’ Clinton murmured drily.
‘Let them shout,’ Wilson was reloading his pistol. ‘Let them keep their courage up.’ He looked up from the weapon at Clinton. ‘You’ll not be joining us
then?’ he asked. ‘You were a fighting man once.’
Clinton shook his head. ‘I killed my last man over twenty-five years ago, but I will look to the wounded and do anything else you want of me.’
‘Go around to each man. Collect all the spare ammunition. Fill the bandoliers and dole ’em out as they are needed.’
Clinton turned back to the centre of the circle, and there were three new men there – one was dead, shot in the head – another with a broken hip – and the third with the shaft
of an assegai protruding from his chest.
‘Take it out!’ his voice rose as he tugged ineffectually at the handle. ‘Take it out! I can’t stand it.’
Clinton knelt in front of him and judged the angle of the blade. The point must lie near the heart. ‘It’s better to leave it,’ he advised gently.
‘No! No!’ The man’s voice rose, and the men in the outer circle looked back, their faces stricken by that hysterical shriek. ‘Take it out!’
Perhaps it was best after all – better than lingering, shrieking death to unnerve the men around him.
‘Hold his shoulders,’ Clinton ordered quietly, and a trooper knelt behind the dying man. Clinton gripped the shaft. It was a beautiful weapon, bound in decorative patterns with hair
from an elephant’s tail and bright copper wire.
He pulled and the wide blade sucked with the sound of a boot in thick mud, and it came free. The trooper shrieked only once more, as his heart’s blood followed the steel out in a bright
torrent.
T
he waves of warriors came again four times before noon. Each time it seemed impossible that they could fail to overwhelm the waiting circle, but
each time they swirled and broke upon it like a tide upon a rock, and then were sucked back into the forest.
After each assault the circle had to be drawn a little smaller, to take up the gaps left by fallen horses and dead and wounded men, and then the Matabele musketeers would creep in again, moving
like quick and silent shadows from mopani to mopani, offering meagre targets, the bulge of a shoulder around the stem of a mopani trunk, little cotton pods of gunsmoke in the patches of green
grass, the black bead of a head bobbing above the summit of one of the scattered termite nests as a warrior rose to fire.
Wilson walked quietly around the circle, talking calmly to each man in turn, stroking the muzzle of a restless horse, and then coming back into the centre.